Scoring & Rules

These are the rules a new league or Showdown starts with. Whoever creates it can change the scoring, the lineup and the pick clock before the first draft opens, so once you’re in a league, its own Rules page is the final word for that league. Everything here is what you get if nobody changes anything.

New to the format? Start with How to Play.

Scoring

Full PPR (a point per reception), scored live from the real NFL box score. The kicking and team defense tables follow ESPN’s standard defaults, so they should feel familiar.

Showdowns start from the same table with one difference: an interception thrown or a fumble lost costs nothing. In a single game with only two quarterbacks, a pick-six shouldn’t decide the whole duel by itself. Where the two formats differ, the table shows both columns.

The draft

• The player pool is the two clubs playing your game: their quarterbacks, running backs, receivers, tight ends and kickers who appear on the club’s depth chart, plus the two team defenses. Nobody from any other game is draftable.
• Every player can be drafted once. If your opponent takes him, he’s gone.
• Snake order, ABBA. The first manager picks once, then the order snakes: A, B, B, A, A, B, B, A, and so on, until both lineups are full (18 picks in total).
• Who picks first. In a season league, the home manager. In the playoffs, the higher seed is home. In a Showdown, a coin flip decides it as soon as the second manager joins.
• The lobby. Every scheduled draft opens with a 2 minutes lobby so both managers can get into the draft room. It ends early if both are in. A manager who isn’t in the room when it ends goes on autodraft until they arrive.
• The pick clock is 2 minutes by default. The home manager can set it anywhere from 1 minute to 24 hours, which turns a live draft into a slow one played over a day. If your clock runs out, the bot makes that pick and keeps picking for you until you switch autodraft off or come back to the room.
• The kickoff cutoff. Whatever the clocks say, a draft still running 1 minute before kickoff is finished by the bot on the spot, so nobody’s week is lost to an unfinished draft.

When a draft happens

• Season leagues: the home manager proposes a draft time and the away manager accepts it. It has to be at least 30 minutes before kickoff. If no time is agreed, the draft opens on its own 90 minutes before kickoff. The commissioner can change that window before the season’s first draft.
• Showdowns: the creator sets a draft time or presses Draft now. A Showdown doesn’t open its own draft, so make sure one of those happens before kickoff.
• Every season matchup gets a draft. If nobody shows up, the bot drafts both lineups, so every week produces a result.

Injury swaps

Drafts can happen hours before kickoff, and players get ruled out in between. Once the draft is over, and until the game kicks off, you can swap out a player carrying an injury designation (Questionable or worse):

• The replacement can be any player from either club in your game, or either defense, who fits the same lineup spot and isn’t already in your lineup or your opponent’s.
• The player you drop is released straight away, so your opponent can pick him up with a swap of their own. Swaps are first come, first served.
• If the player you dropped is still free, swapping him back in restores your original pick.

Scoring, results and ties

• Points update about once a minute while the game is being played, from the official box score. Safeties are credited once the game is final.
• The matchup is decided when the NFL game goes final. Higher total wins.
• Ties in the regular season stand as ties and count as half a win in the standings.
• Ties in the playoffs go to the team with the higher floor, meaning the team whose lowest-scoring starter scored more. If that’s level too, the higher seed advances.
• Ties in a Showdown are a dead heat, recorded as a tie on both managers’ all-time records.

Leagues, standings and playoffs

• A league holds 2 to 32 managers (12 by default). With an odd number, one manager has a bye each week. Byes don’t count in the standings.
• A season league has to be created, and its season generated, before NFL week 1 kicks off, so every league plays the whole season. Once the season is under way, Showdowns are still open any week.
• The regular season is 14 weeks by default (up to 18), on a round-robin schedule: you play everyone once before you play anyone twice, and home games are spread evenly. League week 1 is NFL week 1, week 2 is NFL week 2, and so on.
• Each week, every matchup is randomly given one real NFL game from that week. Matchups in the same league get different games unless the league has more matchups than the NFL has games that week.
• Playoff seeding goes by Best Record, then Total Points For, then Head-to-Head Record, then Highest Points Against. The commissioner can reorder these before the first draft.
• The top 4 teams make the playoffs by default. The field is set when the league is created. The bracket re-seeds every round, so the best remaining seed always plays the lowest one.
• Playoff matchups are drawn from the real NFL postseason: your first playoff round uses Wild Card weekend’s games, then the Divisional round, the Conference Championships and the Super Bowl. You know your playoff opponent as soon as the bracket is set, and your game is drawn as soon as the NFL has set every game in that round.
• Teams that miss the playoffs play a consolation bracket alongside it, with its own champion.

What can be changed, and when

Before the season’s first draft opens, the commissioner can change the scoring values, the lineup spots, the default pick clock, the league size, the season length, the auto-open window and the tiebreaker order. After that the rules are locked for the season. The playoff field is fixed when the league is created. A Showdown’s creator can change its scoring, lineup and pick clock until its draft starts.